University President Lee Bollinger joined the campus debate on the Reserve Officer Training Corps program in a campuswide e-mail on Thursday afternoon.
The statement comes one day before the University Senate plans to discuss ROTC, and before student leaders hold what will likely be the largest meeting so far on the possible return of the Naval ROTC to campus.
In the e-mail, Bollinger called Columbia “open for robust discussion and debate.” He reminded students that “in 2005, the University Senate voted overwhelmingly against formally inviting ROTC onto campus,” largely because of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.
The president suggested that Columbia should respect the Senate’s decision, while noting that a change in the school’s policy might be ineffective because “the Department of Defense (DOD) has, for its own fiscal reasons, instituted a policy of aggregating small numbers of ROTC students in urban areas into pooled programs on a limited number of campuses.” Because only five Columbia students are enrolled in ROTC, the DOD might continue to host its regional programs only at Fordham and St. John’s universities.
Although Bollinger stressed that students can participate in ROTC on other campuses, student leaders have said they want to deal specifically with NROTC because, unlike other branches of ROTC, it is not available to Columbia students.
Bollinger’s e-mail came the same day that Adil Ahmed, CC ’09 and Columbia College Student Council vice president for policy, wrote an opinion column in Spectator addressing the criticism regarding a closed-door meeting on Sept. 17 that planned an undergraduate survey and forums on NROTC.
Ahmed stressed that the original meeting—which had excluded several campus groups that had requested involvement—was meant for planning, not for debating the pros and cons of NROTC. But Ahmed invited student groups to participate in an open meeting Friday if they intend to contribute to two future forums.
Planners said the survey will take place one week after the forums, and Oct. 26 has been discussed as a potential date for the survey, though all dates are tentative.
Students will know a month in advance when the survey would take place, Ahmed said.
Sarah Besnoff, BC ’09 and president of Barnard’s Student Government Association, confirmed that space is reserved for a forum at Barnard. One forum will take place on the Barnard campus, the other on Columbia’s campus. Planners said that every group will have access to both.
But Rajat Roy, SEAS ’10 and a University senator for ESC, said he was upset by Ahmed’s column, which had several “holes” in it.
In his column, Ahmed, who seems to have been at the helm of planning, wrote, “I stopped it [the NROTC conversation] from going to the University Senate until it could be fully surveyed by the student body.”
Roy said this statement was “blatantly false” and an “ego trip” because organizers had always intended to get student input before bringing the topic of NROTC to the senate.
In response, Ahmed said: “We are working very closely to be on the same page. I don’t want to do anything divisive.”
As for the actual survey, Roy said that if students don’t support the return of NROTC, senators representing them won’t consider it. But he pointed out that graduate students and their senators also have the option of raising the issue to the senate.
Similarly, Besnoff said that Barnard’s senator would vote in accordance with Barnard student opinion, as expressed through the survey. But if NROTC reaches the level of approval by Columbia’s board of trustees, Barnard students would have the option of enlisting on Columbia’s campus, not Barnard’s, as it would probably not come to Barnard’s board of trustees.
In his e-mail, Bollinger noted that Columbia “has a long and continuing tradition of making special efforts to open its doors to men and women with military service,” particularly the 50 veterans in GS.
But representatives from the School of General Studies have been noticeably absent from the planning so far, even though GS has more of a military presence in its student body than the other undergraduate colleges do.
General Studies Student Council President Brody Berg said: “My number one thing from the very beginning was to assess student opinion on NROTC in a fair manner. I’ve been very concerned that the issue itself not cloud the process.”
He said there were no GS representatives at the Sept. 17 meeting because, despite the justification by planners, it seemed to focus on discussing NROTC rather than the survey and forums. Berg also said there will be no GSSC members at Friday’s meeting because the council will be on a retreat.
The meeting will take place in Earl Hall Auditorium from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.
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